"A friend borrowed $200K to go to college and now wants to know how to skip out since it'll take a lot of money to repay those loans".

There was a time in our history where nobody with any common sense would actually speak that out loud. But now, in our world of everybody gets a trophy for showing up, businesses that fail due to taking ill-advised risks get no-strings bailouts, and idiots who bought more house than they can afford get their mortgages "adjusted", it's perfectly reasonable.